The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin Book

Re-reading this because Logan makes me itchy to read scads of poetry.

In this "Age of Tin," where Logan sadly notes most American adults will not read "a poem or a play or a novel" in half a year, his provocative criticism challenges readers to seek out verse's hidden gems. Logan's criticism reminds me of a section in Dave Egger's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius where the protagonist (Eggers), founder of Might, describes a desperate moment in the magazine's career, "We have debunked a version of the Bible written for black kids. We have debunked the student loan program. We debunk the idea of college in general, and work in general, and marriage, and makeup, and the Grateful Dead'it is our job to point out all this artifice, everywhere, and the work is rewarding, bringing truth to an unsuspecting'[his appendix bursts here:]". It is not that Eggers no longer cares about the world and Logan no longer cares about poetry, just the opposite. Their negativity attempts to trigger a response, to save the liberal "twentysomethings" from "vichyssoise" and poetry from obscurity, respectively.

Logan's criticism has real appeal with its narrative style, poetic repetition, and quirky parenthetical notes, and I wonder if he knew when he dubbed this age the "Age of Tin," that the metal (like a love for poetry?) resists corrosion.